Interview with Colby Boothman

19th June 2015

A few days ago, Asees and myself spoke with actor Colby Boothman, who you’ll recognise as the young Raptor handler who falls into the Raptor paddock in Jurassic World. Colby has also worked on a number of other projects, including Hot Tub Time Machine 2, The Last Exorcism Part II and more recently the new Star Wars Battlefront videogame.

We had a great interview via Skype and Colby told us multiple stories from the set and detailed his time working on the film. He had a lot of praise for the film as a whole and thoroughly enjoyed his time working with Colin, Jack Horner, the dancers who played the Velociraptors and everybody else.

I use a piece of software called ‘MP3 Skype Recorder’ to record a backup of our podcasts (we individually record our own audio) and I use this same software for interviews. It has never failed for the 18 episodes of the podcast we have recorded. Unfortunately, for a reason that is beyond me, the recording of our interview with Colby had a huge chunk missing. I’m not sure how, but the first 5 minutes, and the remaining 10 minutes of the conversation (which includes us connecting with Colby), are there, but the middle 40 minutes of the interview are missing.

Needless to say, I’m incredibly disappointed that this happened and I have tried everything I can to source the missing audio. I can only apologise to you guys, and to Colby that this happened.

Anyway, I will do my best to relay some of what Colby said. Aside from telling us that he loved every minute of filming Jurassic World, he said he was on set for three or so weeks, and was in awe of the Raptor Paddock said, which was incredibly detailed up to a paddock security sign that was never once seen in the film. All of these tiny details made the set feel real.

He worked with four professional dancers who wore latex suits and donned a Velociraptor helmet, which gave the actors something to look at and respond to. He praised these four dancers, who he has worked with before, for their ability to respond to the environment if something changed or if an actor played something differently. We know that motion capture was used on the Velociraptors and he said that the motion capture was all captured after the main filming, but they did put the tracking dots on the suits for a couple of shots.

While he could not say much about what else he filmed that didn’t make the final cut, he did say that the behind the scenes team did capture some pieces with him. The behind the scenes team are the same team who made the on-set videos with Chris Pratt. He praised the team and said there really is some exciting stuff coming with the Blu-Ray, and told us that the video of Chris Pratt learning to whistle is all real and that he really couldn’t whistle until filming!

Colby’s character is also in the LEGO Jurassic World videogame and by using a cheat code, you can play as him. His character is named in the game as Leon and you can check out a walkthrough of his mission here, and see his character here.

We talked about his two scenes and Colby told us that his stunt double did the impressive fall into the Raptor paddock. He obviously said he would love to return for a sequel, if his character is needed. We asked what was next for him, to which he told us that he has recorded some motion capture work for the upcoming Star Wars: Battlefront videogame. He worked on a lot of the sequences in the game with the lightsaber dueling.

It’s really unfortunate having to try and recall this from memory, as the interview truly was insightful.

Below you can listen to our latest podcast where we discuss our own thoughts on the film, and at 2h28m40s in you can listen to what is left of our interview with Colby.

Thank you to Colby and his agent for allowing us to speak with you, and apologies again for this recording mishap. I won’t be using that piece of software again, that’s for sure.